photos posted by nifticus
This 1970 Toronado is a perfect example of how a truly original and groundbreaking design can be destroyed in just a few years. Every key element that made the ’66 unique was changed; Oldsmobile was obviously ashamed of it and did everything possible to disguise it as a Cutlass.
No, the rear-up stance on this one wasn’t part of that, and I have no explanation for it. It’s a look that’s typically seen on RWD muscle cars, so ironically it’s perfect; another way to make it look even more like Cutlass/442.
Admittedly, this one is actually as good as a 1970 Toronado gets, with its exposed vented steel wheels and no vinyl top. Like this one:
This is how Olds showed it in the 1970 Toronado brochure: as much disguised as possible.
Considering that Chevrolet was content to make only very minor changes to its Corvette for a number of years at a time, one does wonder why Olds didn’t do the same with the Toronado.
The ugly stick was first taken to its very distinctive front end in 1968. This was actually worse than the 1970 front end.
Then the Toro’s very unique and almost radical rear end came in for “normalization” in 1969. Combined with the ’58’s front end, maybe this is the worst one of the bunch.
The 1970 front end is a bit odd, but certainly better than the ’68-’69. The wrap-around element of the ’68-’69 utterly destroyed the prominent bladed front fenders; this one restores that to some extent.
And in 1970, the round prominent fender arches gave way to the squared off ones that were now the thing at Oldsmobile. That changed its character to no small degree.
Not only did the 1969 retograde restyle destroy the rear end, it put back what the ’66 Toronado had so daringly eliminated: any break between the C pillar and the lower half of the body; a true fuselage pioneer. The break line that continued to the peaked fender is just the way cars gad been for so long,before the ’66 Toronado broke the mold. And the squared-off wheel opening was the final stroke. The only thing left was the basic roof line. That would have been too expensive to change.
The result were fender tips, in a way that was often seen on Mitchell-era cars. For that matter, the ’66 was very much not in the typical Mitchell mold; it was a distinctive shape first rendered by Dave North and Mitchell let him run with it, although it had to be enlarged to fit on the longer E Body shared with the Riviera.
I consider the ’66 front end to be a bit overwrought and overly-long, although I appreciate its relatively unique elements. But it’s the rear end and its hind quarters that really made it a true milestone car. And of course that was all gone by 1969.
Why did Olds make all these changes? Because the 41k sales in 1966 weren’t up to their expectations? I’m not sure just what those were, but the Riviera did sell 45k that year, so clearly the Toro wasn’t going to upset any apple carts. And in ’67, sales dropped rather badly to 22k. And stayed below 30k until 1972, when Toronado sales perked up, to 49k, presumably because the boat tail Riviera was a sinking.
It’s not a bad looking car; just not exceptional, like the original. Oh well… the annual model year change was a deeply ingrained concept, and must be obeyed, at all costs.
This is of course where all those changes were leading to: the utterly anodyne 1971 Toronado. Looks like a Monte Carlo crossed with an Eldorado. But by 1972, it was working, and in 1973, it set a peak for the big Toronado at 56k units. Conventionality sells.
That picture kinda looks like a cross between a 72 Dodge Charge and ad a Studebaker Avanti. I think it’s a nice looking car for that era. I like it. I think the problem with sales was that it was not cheap, more than people had to spend.
The first photo looks great..
I agree the first model had stunning simple lines that were progressively ruined…
There is a local car here that takes up most of our narrow roads…
I looked up specs.. says only weighed 2000k so went very well.
They built , it didnt sell so they restyled it so it would, same misteps taken by Chrysler with the Airflow and Ford with the Edsel,
It was not talked about much at the time, but when it came out in ’66, the thin band grill and wheel design were made to emulate the coffin nose Cord 810 Sportsman. The last big front wheel drive American car before it, and hence, it’s spiritual predacessor. Compare them and it will jump out at you.
It was not talked about much at the time, but when it came out in ’66, thin band grill and wheel design were made to emulate the coffin nose Cord 810 Sportsman. The last big front wheel drive American car before it,and hence, it’s spiritual predacessor. Compare them and it will jump out at you.
The engineering review of the Toro wheel is interesting, it outlines how the wheel design boiled down to form-follows-function. Once the must-have features were checked there weren’t many choices left.
In the entire 12 year run, OE and aftermarket combined, there were only a few (maybe five?) wheel variations. That’s unusual and underscores how “tight” wheel design limitations were.
Some may be surprised to hear that the wheel used its own proprietary valve stem; shared with no others and no substitutes are workable.
Not sure what to make of the 1970 Toronado… they’re definitely *different*, and a step down from the 1966-67 style-wise. Still not a bad looking car to my eyes. The 1971 Toro was where the plot was lost, as it looked mostly like any number of other 1970’s personal luxury tuna boats. The high mounted brake lights were about the only interesting touch I can recall on those.
Once again, Paul and I agree on a car.
You have nicely put into words what I felt about the Toronado as it slowly morphed out of its original form. It was never right after the first 2 years, but I never bothered to analyze why.
The Toronado is kind of like the Mercury Cougar – after an original design that was just about perfect, the car never again hit all the right notes. Actually, I think the Riviera suffered from this syndrome as well, though to a lesser degree.
I think maybe the problem was that Oldsmobile was a lot of things, but it was not a place most people thought to go for personal luxury. Or maybe that’s backwards – Oldsmobile could have been a personal luxury headquarters if it had offered the right car, as, for example, it did in the Ninety-Eight Regency of the 70s. The 1979 Toronado was actually the one that finally hit that spot.
The parallels with the Mercury Cougar are pretty accurate, both started off as something truly distinctive and identifiable but devolved into discount versions of the corporate flagships, For the Cougar the Lincoln Marks and for the Toronado the Eldorado. The 71-73 Cougars best parallel the 70 Toronado, all the elements of what they’d become were previewed in these incarnations, but were held back from being fully transformed by their legacy body structure, creating an odd blending of styles.
You could add the 1966-’67 Buick Riviera to the list of annual restyle-ruined GM cars. The contrast between the 1966 and 1970 are painful to look at. Both these E-Body hash-jobs were on par with what was done to the 1953 Studebaker Starliner in following years…at least until it was cleaned up for the GT Hawk.
Oldsmobile management clearly had conflicting objectives and unrealistic sales projections for the 1966 Toronado. Was it to be their sportiest car? Was it to be their top luxury car? Which to emphasize? How would it hurt the 4-4-2 and the Ninety-Eight? Restyles drew it stylistically closer to the other Oldsmobiles until the 1970 could be essentially mistaken for a nicely-proportioned Delta 88.
1971…sad end to a car that started with a stellar design.
I view the first gen Rivera as the automotive Venus Di Milo of the early 1960’s.
I agree that the first Gen Rivi is the best, but I prefer the ’65 – the hidden headlights perfect the grill and the front generally.
I view the ’53 Studie as the automotive Venus Di Milo of the 1950;s.
Ah yes. The 1953-54 Commander Starliner is my absolute favorite car of all time. Finally got an unmodified ’53 in my hands back in 2010, then life simultaneously pooped all over me a few months later and I had to let it go. Hope to have one again someday.
I also like the 1955’s and all of the Hawks, though none of them matched the timeless beauty of the first two years. All subjective, but that’s my take…
Sorry to all for veering off topic, but 53-4 Studes really turn my crank.
Agreed. Although the car was mechanically beset by typical Studebaker issues, there’s a reason that the ’53-’54 Starliner is regarded by many as one of the best styled car, ever, not only from the United States, but the world.
From what I’ve read a big problem with the ’53 Starliner was the flexiframe. I wonder if anyone doing a body off restoration of a ’53 Starliner just substitutes a later Lark/Avanti convertible frame or stiffens it with a bunch of welded on plates.
Cars over the years have gotten much stiffer, part of the reason why they handle a lot better today. Probably stiffening any of them with an X brace as typically added to convertibles or boxing the frame members etc. would improve any of them.
Have they ever been able to track down the engineering genius who was responsible for the ’53 ‘flexiframe’? Sheesh, that was about as boneheaded an idea as they could have possibly thought up, definitely falling into the ‘what were they thinking?’ category.
Michael, the C/K body that was the Starliner/Starlight/Hawk was a 120.5 inch wheelbase car. The Lark convertible and Avanti were on a 109 inch wheelbase frame, so that would be one problem.
The frame was designed with a certain amount of flex on the theory it would result in a smoother ride. Road shocks would be absorbed by the frame before they were transmitted to the body. That was the theory. It didn’t work so well in practice for Studebaker.
GM and Ford later adopted this idea in the 1960s. It worked better for them because they made the car bodies relatively stiff to compensate for the flexible frames.
The ultimate solution was to use a stiff unit body with steel-belted radial tires and a carefully designed suspension to give a better balance of ride and handling.
Studebaker understood the problem early and built the 1955 and later cars with a heavier gauge frames but still no X-members. SDC members have installed the 1960’s Lark station wagon X-members in those 120.5″ wb frames. Its a bit short but with modification does added the needed stiffening.
A flexing frame was supposed to isolate road vibration and noise from the body but didn’t work that way. Loewy had pushed his “Weight is the Enemy” mantra for years on Studebaker who took the concept a tad too far with the 1953 line.
I remember reading that Oldsmobile management was conflicted about playing up front-wheel-drive too much, as they feared customers would start asking why the 88 and Ninety-Eight didn’t have it, too.
In retrospect, the big mistake here was not placing the car on a modified A-body platform. (That is what both Bill Mitchell and John Beltz originally wanted.) A smaller Toronado could have played up its sporty attributes (the early ones did have good handling) and created its own market niche.
Yes, besides the size it was kind of stupid to engineer a complex chain driven heavy V8 FWD system for a type of car that following the 1958 Thunderbird mold would typically have two or four bucket seats with the transmission tunnel made into a console, turning a problem into a feature – one of the brilliant elements of the original Ford concept. As I remember it the original Toronado was criticized for having a hard ride for its weight and size, apparently in an effort to make it handle adequately given its FWD and front heavy weight and power, while its cousins rode better.
A smaller Toro would just have quickly morphed into a brohamized Cutlass Supreme. No the problem wasn’t it’s size. The ‘66 was a stunning car. Unique and athletic, with beautiful proportions and Cadillac luxury. Sure the FWD was wasted on a car such as this, but what the hell, this was during the “GM can do anything it wants” years, and adds to it uniqueness. The market for such a car was never high and 40k+ units the first year really wasn’t bad. This was a halo car for Olds that could get customers in the showroom.
The problem was that GM just couldn’t let well enough alone. They just had to make stupid cosmetic changes every model year for change sake. Practically every one was a disaster, destroying the personality of the car. It’s as if there was some commandment from on high that each model year must be changed in some fashion under penalty of death. But keeping visually unchanged cars for many model years is something VW and Mercedes did and we Americans were gonna get brand “mew and improved” models every year.
I vividly remember being a mechanic at an Olds dealer back in the Fall of 1965, when I got a call from a sales guy Saturday morning. He said you gotta get down here, they’re getting ready to deliver the first Toronado. We all ran down there and watched them roll it off the truck. We all thought it looked like a spaceship from the future! Then we opened the hood….wow! Most of us had no idea this was coming.
“I’ll show you ‘how-to’… in [five] easy steps…” 🎵🎶
I can find something to really like about all five of the Toronado’s first years, including the “big, chrome lips” 🤣 of the 1968 and ’69 models. I agree with your analysis that the bladed front fenders of the ’70 was an improvement, though.
I don’t take issue with the shoulders added to the 1969 and ’70 models, but like most people (I assume), the ’66 and ’67 models are my favorites.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NBymTNop_bM
Supposedly John Beltz didn’t like the front of the original Toronado. Hence, the restyle for 1968 that completely destroyed that aspect of the car.
Regarding the “fuselage” rear quarter panels – Oldsmobile didn’t just retreat from this feature on the Toronado. The 1968-69 A-body Cutlass/442 featured smooth, “shoulder-less” rear quarter panels. For 1970, the four-door sedans and two-door fastbacks had a highlight added above the rear wheels, while the formal-roof Supreme two-door hardtop featured a distinct break between the rear pillar and the quarter panel.
Interesting to bring up the word ‘fuselage’ as it applied to the Toronado. After the ’62 downsizing debacle, Chrysler was into full ‘copy-GM’ mode and it’s likely not much of a stretch to speculate that the 1969 Chrysler fuselage cars were directly influenced by the ’66 Toronado. The only difference from past GM copies was that the ’69 Chrysler styling wasn’t nearly as obvious as other vehicles.
Two observations:
Your description of the ’71 – “a Monte Carlo crossed with an Eldorado” – is perfect.
The Nissan Maxima’s styling journey reminds me of the Toro’s – the Max gets progressively uglier with each generation, and each new generation makes the previous one look good, as opposed to simply less ugly! Weird –
Allow me to be a voice of dissent. I think the proportions are much better on the 69 and 70 than they are on the 66-68. The long hood short deck ratio on the earlier cars is too extreme for my taste even if they are better detailed.
And there were other styling requirements that drive these changes as well.
First the Toro had to find a way to adopt a split grille when that became a trademark Olds styling feature in 68. While I would agree the 70 front is agreeable, it actually does a poorer job of looking like an Olds than the 68-69.
Second, as vinyl roofs became de rigeur, the C pillar had to respond. The vinyl roof integration on 67-68 Toros is awful. While in the 68-69 cars it is a lesson on how it is best done, particularly with halo roof detailing.
For my money, the 69 is the best of the first gen Toros on the outside. The wheel arches are more dynamic. There was a 69 in regular use near me in the early 80s when I was a teen and I spent lots of time admiring the details.
Interiors are another matter. There I would agree it went downhill every year. But I suppose there were safety imperatives to be met.
I do agree about the Riviera going downhill from 66-70. Particularly the 70, which is just weird.
I like the ’70 front end. It looks like they styled it after the Barris custom ’67 “Mannix” Toronado.
I can’t say I ever really warmed to the Toronado, even in its original incarnation (although I understand what GM was trying to do as a sort of retro-Cord 810). I don’t even mind the ’68-’69 nose that much. But the ’70? That’s just weird.
If I were to pick a favorite Toronado, it would be 3rd gen ’79-’85 car, which I like better than its Eldorado and Riviera stablemates. Of course, GM still screwed things up by not offering that model as a convertible (a version never offered from the factory). I understand the price would have been too close to the Cadillac to sell, but it sure would have been the best looking drop-top of the three.
I just never thought the Toronado was the best choice for a PLC. There was always something else I’d have rather had, whether a Riviera, Grand Prix, Monte Carlo, or whatever Ford or even Chrysler was offering at the same time.
They needed that line for the increasingly popular vinyl roof.
The fuselage may be more distinctive, but the tail looks too small to my eyes, like the too-low, pinched-bean aerodynamic fascia of the last 30 years, after the large expanse of unbroken metal in front of it. But it probably looks better in real life.
I suspect they heard potential buyers were put off by the apparent fragility of the fender blades, so they overcompensated.
Must have been expensive to blunt the front and add rear fender tips then change the wheel openings for a single year. 1970 had the GM strike and an economic downturn IIRC, which may have dampened sales.
Mark, I agree with you on both the Studie, & the Riviera, & I’ve thought that for many decades.
Thanks !
The 70 front end is weird looking but it definitely works better, the return of the blades and the cleaned up unsplit grille are more in the vein of the original design, if a little watered down, the 68 nose is just abysmal. I don’t hate the squared off wheelarches but the rear end really is a mess. GMs fascination with putting plain looking taillights into a tall bumper turns me off of many otherwise attractive products from the 68-72 timespan.
I think John Smyser said it best with his “Terrifying Toronado”